Dusting Attack

A dusting attack is the sending of tiny amounts of crypto, called dust, to many wallet addresses in order to trace who controls them. On a transparent blockchain, the sender watches to see when the dust is later combined with other coins in a single transaction; that combination links the addresses together and can help deanonymise the owner. Dust is also used as bait, since some dusted tokens lead to phishing sites when a user tries to sell them. Receiving dust is not itself dangerous and it cannot drain a wallet, but interacting with it can be. Common responses are to ignore the dust, mark it as unspendable in wallets that support coin control, and never visit a site suggested by an unsolicited token.